Diana Bilimoria has dedicated her life to studying issues of gender and diversity in leadership.

Bilimoria, who also carries the title of KeyBank professor in Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management, has co-authored books on gender equity in the workforce and in higher education, and she leads and teaches in a variety of the university’s executive education programs for women, such as the Women in Leadership certificate and the Leadership Labs for Women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and in manufacturing. She is also the co-principal investigator for the university on a number of National Science Foundation Advance grants for programs focused on gender equity for STEM faculty. Crain’s sat down with Bilimoria to learn a little more about her research and why companies should do a better job at developing women for leadership roles. Why don’t we start out by you telling me about your research?My research overall looks at issues of gender, diversity and inclusion in organizations. I focused on the area of the board of directors, I focused on top management teams and in more recent years, I focused on women faculty, particularly in the STEM areas, as well. And the kinds of questions I’m interested in asking and getting answers to is what can organizations do to facilitate the career development and leadership of women, how can we accelerate advancement and retention — improve retention — how can we bring the right people to the table when decisions are being made and be inclusive in creating a climate that is welcoming to all, particularly at the top of organizations. What brought you to this type of research to begin with? My dissertation was in the area of how boards of directors make decisions about compensation and hiring and firing of CEOs, in corporations, mostly in Fortune 500 corporations. There was one variable that I collected data on but never really hypothesized anything and that was the gender of the board of directors. ... And after my dissertation was completed, I said let me go back and really just take a look at the effects and anything that I can find regarding this variable.

What we found was that, even at this highest level of the most elite leadership at the top of organizations, there is still what we call sex segregation in the sense that, even when you get to the board of directors, women are more likely to be appointed to committees like public relations, communications and social responsibility, public affairs and so on. And men are more likely to be appointed to committees such as compensation, executive. And so these are a very subtle but persistent segregation on the basis of whether the director is man or a woman. And the powerful thing for me was if this could be happening among this most elite group of women — you could not find more qualified, more competent, more leader-like women — if this was happening there, then how much must it be happening everywhere else?

Why do you think that companies should care about this?There’s correlations between organizations that have more women at the top, both on their board, as well as their top management teams, just seem to do better. They seem to do better financially, in terms of both stock performance measures, as well as accounting performance measures. They seem to be doing better in terms of having a more diverse workforce. They seem to be doing better in terms of more philanthropic and more socially responsible activities of the organizations. What can companies do to try to ensure that women are represented at those higher levels, as opposed to being just overall represented in their company?One of the big factors is that CEOs, senior managers, have to be invested in bringing change about. In my experience, it’s not that these individuals do not recognize that it’s important. They do. … What is lacking sometimes is how to do this. How to bring about change. And how to do it in a way that preserves the core values and the core assets — the human values — and at the same time, be open to change. And that’s I think where CEOs and senior managers sometimes are feeling the rub in that they are concerned that the changes that are necessary may be difficult to bring about. Does research show anything companies can do in terms of recruitment, retention and advancement of diverse candidates? Our experience, particularly with the NSF Advance group of institutions, tells us that there’s lots that’s happening at the university level that corporations can learn from. This is a very unique twist because usually, business leads in innovations. Business leads in transformations and changes. In this particular case, I have a feeling that universities are leading. And business can learn from what NSF Advance has been doing. And essentially the lessons from NSF Advance are that there has to be institutional change, that it has to be at the level of the full organization, that it has to be multi-level, it has to be multi-tiered. It should have comprehensive reach.

In many cases, it’s like when corporations introduce a major change initiative, such as Six Sigma or Lean or quality circles. These are major innovations, and they are cultural transformations. Companies that select to do these put in huge investments. They are driven by top management. They are supported by managers at every level. They have grassroots elements to them, as well. They’re supported by training, by development. And there’s usually champions who are held accountable.

Is there anything you think is important that we have not discussed so far?You know, I think about my mom’s life or my grandmother’s life, and the life I’m leading is substantially different. So I want to acknowledge that we’ve done well. Organizations have recognized what needs to happen. ... So what I’m hopeful about is that organizations recognize that having more diverse talent in their managerial pools, especially in the talent that rises to the top, and that they can take advantage of that diverse talent and harness the power of that to create a more fulfilling workplace for everyone. I think that’s really the message I want to give. That I feel hopeful that we’re getting there. We’re moving in that direction. We’re seeing changes. Some of them are slow, but in the big picture, you know, things are moving.

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